These sample scans are from the original record. You will get scans of the full pages or articles where the surname you searched for has been found.

Your web browser may prevent the sample windows from opening; in this case please change your browser settings to allow pop-up windows from this site.

Inhabitants of Leicester
(1103-1327)The Corporation of Leicester commissioned the publication (in 1899) of extracts from the earliest borough archives, edited by Mary Bateson. This volume brings together several important sources: the borough charters; the merchant gild rolls (from 1196 onwards); tax returns; court rolls (from about 1260 onwards); mayoral accounts, &c. All the Latin and French texts are accompanied by English translations. Membership of the merchant gild was by right of inheritance (s. p. = sede patris, in his father's seat), or by payment of a fee called a 'bull' (taurus). The sample scan shows part of a gild entrance roll; those marked * paid their bull, and were thus, by implication, not natives, or at least not belonging to gild merchant families. By 1400 membership of the gild merchant had become the equivalent of gaining freedom of the borough (being a free burgess): but at this period the two were not necessarily the same, and some of the merchant gild members were not resident in the borough, merely traded there. Not all the tax rolls surviving for this period are printed: but full lists of names are given for a loan for redemption of pontage and gavelpence of 1252-3 (pp. 44-46); five tallages of 1269 to 1271 brought together in a single table (128-145); and tallages of 1286 (208-211), 1307 (255-257), 1311 (272-274) and 1318 (310-313). The portmanmoot (or portmote) was the borough court dealing with minor infractions and civil suits. Finally, there is a calendar of charters (from c.1232 onwards, 381-400), and a list of mayors, bailiffs (reeves), receivers and serjeants (401-407).